February 20, 2009: MA Research at Camberwell
Next week we have set up a critique situation with the other MA Digital Arts students currently at Camberwell. I don’t really have a sense of who most of the other students outside our group are. I’ve been in touch with Zai Tang and Simon Ball briefly via email and they both seem great- enthusiastic and committed to what they’re doing.
I realized this morning that one of the complexities of most research is that it tends to be collaborative and carried out by small groups of people with similar interests or who embark on that research based on common concerns. However what seems to have happened at Camberwell now, at this point in this semester is that this idea of artist as researcher, seems to have fallen away and shifted radically to artist as exhibitor. We are all now focusing on the large Camberwell 2009 exhibition which will be mounted this summer to open July 7, 2009.
Research is a more speculative endeavour. Making results public and disseminating research is not usually dependent on an external timeline like this group exhibition. There’s a contradiction there. I guess you could also argue that research doesn’t neatly fit into the one or two year timeline of a MA with units and learning outcomes either.
What seems to have fallen by the wayside within this Camberwell program is the original research paradigm and the questions that were asked when we applied for this MA. What were our research questions- what are we proposing to discover or explore; what is the context- what work, both theoretical and practical, relates to our projects; what will our methodologies be- what methods will we employ to research our projects; and finally what resources will we need- what equipment, facilities and expertise will we require to carry out our research?
Instead these larger research questions are being replaced with the exigencies of a large group exhibition- we need a 500 word artist’s statement to accompany our work and figure out the technical requirements from our work.
I’m not sure how to address this question with my colleagues and fellow students. What is the real purpose of this Camberwell 2009 summer exhibition as it relates to our various research projects?